Fate's Palette: Painted Me Green
Ch 1: A Freak Even Amongst Freaks

Disclaimer: If I was enterprising enough to own the rights to TMNT I'd probably also own the internet by now. As it is, the artistic masterminds behind our favorite mutants are Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
Rating: PG / PG13-ish
Universe: Post Ninja Tribunal New Toon. No Fast Forward!
Notes: Due to developments further along in the story I've made a few changes to the first few chapters. Nothing huge, but worth re-reading. It's gotten a bit darker.
Warnings: Nothing yet. Future language. Future situations not for the easily offended.

Michelangelo

Hamato Michelangelo had decided years ago that he was different than his brothers. So different, in fact, that on more than one occasion he'd wondered if he was even really related to any of them. They were serious while he wanted to have fun, they were pessimists for the most part while he tried to see the positives in life. Along the way he'd admitted to himself that his brothers were smarter than he was and that they also seemed to learn and remember things much easier than he did. Physically they had always been bigger than he was, and as they'd aged even the emerging slight bluishness to his skin tone seemed to set him apart from them in his mind. But most importantly, they weren't..defective..like he was.

He wasn't sure what to call it really. All he knew was that his brothers didn't get...sick...like he did. He'd always been...sick...for as far back as he could remember. He'd never brought it up. He didn't dare! The youngest turtle actually went out of his way to hide it away as his most well kept secret. Even he himself wasn't sure why he'd done it as a child, but as he'd grown it became all too clear that someone like him would never be allowed to become a ninja. He couldn't be sure that his family would even want to keep him around if they knew. But they DIDN'T know. Not even Master Splinter knew how...flawed...he was. And Michelangelo planned on keeping it that way.

But it was becoming harder and harder to hide. Ever since the Shredder had entered the picture it had become nearly impossible to get away from the others when he felt the familiar signs of an...episode...coming. His blue-clad brother in particular seemed to have teetered over an invisible edge and into a whole new realm of overprotectiveness. And Leonardo's new attitude meant that he didn't like to let ANY of his brothers out of his sight if he could help it. So the youngest turtle had taken the drastic measure of 'pulling a Raph', as he called it, and simply sneaking out and disappearing without permission when the need arose. And the need seemed to be arising more and more often in the past years. His secret wasn't going to keep much longer...

The first thing that Michelangelo was aware of when he regained any sense of coherency was the feeling of intense pain radiating from his head both internally and externally. Immediately after that came the feeling that every muscle in his body was tensed as tight as a spring. Soon after came conscious thought. And with conscious thought came worry. He quickly tucked worry into the back of his mind, to be dealt with a bit later, and instead put his efforts into something more physical, like motion.

Unfortunately, attempting motion quickly reminded him of his painfully tight muscles. So he went about attempting to slowly stretch his aching body. That too turned out to be a bit of a painful experience as he began discovering the network of rug-burn like scrapes running along his extremities. Bruises also painted his kneecaps, as well as his elbows, and even the knuckles on his left hand. The orange-clad turtle tried not to think of what he must look like to an outside observer.

After what felt like an eternity of careful stretching and flexing he was left to face a scary fact. His left arm didn't seem to want to respond to his commands nearly as well as it should have. What should have been a rapid flexing of his three fingers instead came out as sluggish twitching. The worry he'd pushed into the back of his mind quickly evolved into panic. This had never happened before! Mikey may not have been the sharpest crayon in the box, but he knew that this could be a ninjutsu career ending injury.

"I can fix this" he whispered to no one. "I HAVE to fix this!" He continued his attempt to wiggle his fingers completely unaware of the time slipping by...